Procurement Regulations

Procurement is the process of finding and buying works, equipment, goods and services. Under the agreement with government which regulates our use of taxpayers' money, we must make sure that all procurement which we finance, whether directly or indirectly, achieves value for money.

All grant-aided projects must demonstrate that value for money will be achieved. This means grant-aided building works will normally need to be procured competitively by getting at least three tenders. For information on grants funded through Heritage Protection Commissions (HPC) please look on our HPC web pages.

Transparent process

Direct public expenditure is subject to additional standards established by the European Community Treaty of Rome and fully incorporated in UK Procurement Regulations. These include:

The principles of non-discrimination and equal treatment

The freedom to provide services across Member States

Transparency, which in practice means that work must be advertised in advance and slection procedures must be impartial

Where more than 50% of the costs of a project are publicly funded, it is treated as if it is direct public expenditure and so these principles will apply.

A new issue of the Procurement Regulations came into force in 2015. The guidance and model documents on these pages will be updated shortly. If you are in any doubt please contact your local Historic England office.

For the majority of our repair grants the total grant from public bodies (which includes Historic England, the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Listed Places of Worship Grant scheme and the European Regional Development Fund) does exceed 50% of the overall project costs, and so the public procurement regulations will apply.

This means that in many cases our grant recipients will have to appoint their main professional adviser and building contractor in a transparent way. This will involve advertising the work in advance as well as running a competitive process. We encourage all grant recipients to follow the approach recommended in these pages. This will ensure that you can demonstrate value for money regardless of the level of grant as well as complying with the regulations for those projects which are covered by them. Grants funded through Heritage Protection Commissions (HPC) also adhere to the above principles. For more information please look on our HPC web pages.

Please note that it is a condition of our grants that the procurement strategy should be agreed by us before tenders are sought.

Where we make a grant to a local authority or another public body or company and the grant recipient's thresholds for formal tenders and advertising are higher than the ones set out here, we would expect our thresholds to be applied.

Procurement regulations and thresholds may be subject to change. If so, these webpages will be updated. Where any of the guidance here conflicts with the 'Managing Your Grant' or 'Guidance for Grant Recipients' leaflet annexed to your grant offer please treat these webpages as our most up-to-date guidance.